The culture of bacteria and other microorganisms is an important technique for diagnostic and biomedical purposes. In standard culture techniques, bacteria are placed in contact with a medium which contains the nutrients necessary for sustaining growth and multiplication, and incubated under appropriate conditions to encourage such growth and multiplication.
However, this procedure is often long and tedious. Additionally, many bacteria cannot be easily cultured. For example, strict anaerobes are sensitive to oxygen and will not grow in its presence. Fastidious bacteria, on the other hand, are unable to metabolize many medium components and require a complex set of nutrients for growth. Thus, culture media must be pre-treated and/or fortified to permit use with specific bacteria.
Researchers have attempted to use additives to improve media for particular applications. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,476,224 to Adler discloses that oxygen can be removed from a culture medium (thereby increasing its utility in anaerobic culture) by the addition of sterilized bacterial membrane fragments. Such a product is sold by Oxyrase, Inc. under the name Oxyrase.TM. Enzyme System. However, the utility of this additive is limited to anaerobic culture.
Similarly, the addition of various nutrients to a culture medium is known in the art. However, this again is limited only to the culture of organisms having those particular nutrition requirements.
There exists a real need for media additives which will promote the growth of a wide array of bacteria, and which are compatible with different media.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to present a culture medium additive which is capable of promoting the growth of all types of bacteria, including anaerobic, facultatively anaerobic, and aerobic bacteria, on a variety of media. It is further an object of this invention to present a medium additive capable of promoting the growth of fastidious bacteria, whether strict anaerobes or not.